Should the United States Transition Away from Fossil Fuels and Towards Renewable Energy?

"I don't think I've changed my view on what we need to do to go from where we are, where the world is heavily dependent on coal and oil, but principally coal, to where we need to be, which is clean renewable energy, and one of the bridge fuels is natural gas. And so for both economic and environmental and strategic reasons, it was American policy to try to help countries get out from under the constant use of coal, building coal plants all the time, also to get out from under, especially if they were in Europe, the pressure from Russia, which has been incredibly intense. So we did say natural gas is a bridge. We want to cross that bridge as quickly as possible, because in order to deal with climate change, we have got to move as rapidly as we can. That's why I've set big goals. I want to see us deploy a half a billion more solar panels by the end of my first term and enough clean energy to provide electricity to every home in America within 10 years."

"If we did have the 100% efficiency improvement [in renewable energy] every 5 years, the green space would provide us 15% of our energy needs in 15 years. That doesn’t cut it. We really have to rely on traditional [energy] sources. That's the reality. And that is coal. And that's nuclear. And that's natural gas. And oil."

"There has been a big push to develop alternative forms of energy--so-called green energy--from renewable sources. That's a big mistake. To begin with, the whole push for renewable energy is being driven by the wrong motivation, the mistaken belief that global climate change is being caused by carbon emissions. If you don't buy that--and I don't--then what we have is really just an expensive way of making the tree-huggers feel good about themselves.
The most popular source of green energy is solar panels. They work, but they don't make economic sense. They don't provide enough energy savings to cover the cost of installing and using them. They are the most highly subsidized for of green energy in America.
Some estimates claim it takes as long as several decades after installing solar panels to get your money back. That's not exactly what I would call a sound investment."

Source: Donald Trump, Crippled America, 2015

FORMER CANDIDATES

(Candidates who have withdrawn or who no longer meet our criteria appear below in black and white and in alphabetical order.)

"The leaders of the seven major industrialized nations, including the United States, agreed in the summer of 2015 to a long-term goal of phasing out fossil fuels entirely and moving to an economy powered entirely by clean energy sources like wind, solar and geothermal. We're already transitioning to a clean energy economy – but scientists say we need to do it faster and we need to do it right...

Scientists warn us if we continue burning fossil fuels, we will experience cataclysmic change, in terms of more disease, more hunger, more drought, more famine, rising sea levels, more floods, more ocean acidification, more extreme weather disturbances and more human suffering. That means we must leave the vast majority of global reserves of coal, natural gas and oil in the ground...

Bernie recently co-sponsored the Keep It in the Ground Act to ban future fossil fuel leases on our public lands. His legislation would keep over 90 percent of the potential carbon emissions from fossil fuels on our federal lands and waters underground forever.

Bernie believes we must transition away from fossil fuel consumption to prevent the worst impacts of climate change."

"When it comes to energy, I think we should pursue all of the above. America is blessed with abundant energy sources, and we ought to pursue everything. We ought to pursue oil and gas, and coal, nuclear, wind, and solar, and biofuel and ethanol. All across the board, we ought to use the tremendous resources we have. You look at what this administration has done, it has waged a war on energy. It’s waged a war on oil and gas, and it has waged a war on coal, something fierce."

"In our state [Ohio], we've reduced emissions by 30 percent. But let me tell you also what we're trying to do. We want all the sources of energy. We want to dig coal, but we want to clean it when we burn it. We believe in natural gas. We believe in nuclear power.

And you know what else I believe in? I happen to believe in solar energy, wind energy, efficiency, renewables matter."